Bernard Malamud Quotes

There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to go--if there are no doors or windows--he walks through a wall.

Where to look if you've lost your mind?

We have two lives... the life we learn with and the life we live after that. Suffering is what brings us towards happiness.

Without heroes we're all plain people and don't know how far we can go.

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying itself." (Interview, New York Post Magazine, September 14, 1958)

There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.

I fix what's broken - except in the heart.

Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.

A man is an island in the only sense that matters, not an easy way to be. We live in mystery, a cosmos of separate lonely bodies, men, insects, stars. It is all loneliness and men know it best.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course

If the stories come, you get them written, you're on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.

We have two lives; the life we learn with and the life we live after that.

Would you say you have a "philosophy" Of your own? If so what is it?' 'If I have it's all skin and bones...If I have any philosophy...it's that life could be better than it is.

You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.

When I don't feel hurt, I hope they bury me.

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.

Charity you can give even when you haven't got.

His worst fault is he thinks his brains entitle him to certain privileges.

A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.

Without heroes we are all plain people and don't know how far it is we can go.

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge & enhance an idea, to reform it . . . Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing.

Nobody lived in Eden anymore.

In a sick country every step to health is an insult to those who live on its sickness.

Who invented my life?

So sleep now, without fear for your life, and if you should ever manage to get out of prison, keep in mind that the purpose of freedom is to create it for others.

In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.

will you please explain how you can cry for a dead dog yet belong to a society of fanatics that urges death on human beings who happen to be Jews? Explain to me the logic of it.

She is not for you. She is a wild one--wild, without shame. This is not a bride for a rabbi".

She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes--clearly her father's--were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers out-thrust.

A meshummed gives up one God for another. I don't want either. We live in a world where the clock ticks fast while he's on his timeless mountain staring in space. He doesn't see us and he doesn't care. Today I want my piece of bread, not in Paradise.

Mourning died slowly. It never fully dies for something truly loved.

He remembered how satisfied he had been as a youngster, and that with the little he had had - a dog, a stick, an aloneness he loved (which did not bleed him like his later loneliness), and he wished he could have lived longer in his boyhood. This was an old thought with him.

But she had recently come to think that in such unhappy times--when the odds were so high against personal happiness--to find love was miraculous, and to fulfill it as best two people could was what really mattered.

Where a boy runs he never forgets.

I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small things to offer - he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity.

We have two lives, […], the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness All it taught me was to stay away from it. — Bernard Malamud, The Natural (Harcourt Brace, 1952)

There comes a time in a (wo)man's life when to get where (s)he has to -- if there are no doors or windows -- he walks through a wall.

Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go.

Life, despite their frantic yoohooings, had passed them by.

Since I can’t be a professional on account of lack of education I wouldn’t mind being wealthy.

His blood changed to falling snow.

They say God appeared in history and used it for his purposes, but if that was so he had no pity for men.

There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.” Shmuel

It was a strange thing about people- they could look the same but be different.

Write your heart out.

Of course I was embarrassed but I don't think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own

Keep in mind, Yakov Shepsovitch, that if your life is without value, so is mine. If the law does not protect you, it will not, in the end, protect me. Therefore I dare not fail you, and that is what causes me anxiety—that I must not fail you.

There’s something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil.

Among the writers he was reading when he wrote these stories in the 1950s—and he was reading all the time, all kinds of books, dozens and dozens of them—were David Riesman, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, John Cheever, James Baldwin, Randall Jarrell, Sigmund Freud, Paul Goodman, William Styron, C. Wright Mills, Martin Buber, George Orwell, Suzanne Langer, F. R. Leavis, David Daiches, Edmund Wilson, Alfred Kazin, Ralph Ellison, Erich Fromm, Joseph Conrad, Dylan Thomas, Sean O’Casey, e. e. cummings—who collectively represented a republic of discourse in which he aspired to

Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered--sometimes it seemed to take forever--went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.

noodles.

Being born a Jew meant being vulnerable to history, including its worst errors. Accident and history had involved Yakov Bok as he had never dreamed he could be involved. The involvement was, in a way of speaking, impersonal, but the effect, his misery and suffering, were not. The suffering was personal, painful, and possibly endless.

Kiev, you understand, is a medieval city full of wild superstition and mysticism. It has always been the heart of Russian reaction. The Black Hundreds, may they sink into their graves, have aroused against you the most ignorant and brutal of the masses. They are deathly afraid of Jews and at the same time frighten them to death. This reveals to you something about the human condition. Rich or poor, those of our brethren who can run out of here are running. Some who can’t are already mourning.

Wonderboy flashed in the sun. It caught the sphere where it was biggest. A noise like a twenty-one gun salute cracked the sky. There was a straining, ripping sound and a few drops of rain spattered to the ground. The ball screamed toward the pitcher and seemed suddenly to dive down at his feet. He grabbed it to throw to first and realized to his horror that he held only the cover. The rest of it, unraveling cotton thread as it rode, was headed into the outfield.

«Ricordo che la sera che ci siamo conosciuti lei disse che qui sperava di fare un uso migliore della sua vita. C’è riuscito?» «È quello che si dovrebbe sempre fare». «Mi dica, che cosa vuole dalla vita?» «Ordine, valore, soddisfazione, amore», disse Levin. «L’amore all’ultimo posto?» «L’amore in ogni momento».

Her face deeply moved him. Why, he could at first not say. It gave him the impression of youth--spring flowers, yet age--a sense of having been used to the bone, wasted; this came from the eyes, which were hauntingly familiar, yet absolutely strange. He had a vivid impression that he had met her before, but try as he might he could not place her although he could almost recall her name, as he had read it in her own handwriting. No, this couldn't be; he would have remembered her. It was not, he affirmed, that she had an extraordinary beauty--no, though her face was attractive enough; it was that something about her moved him. Feature for feature, even some of the ladies of the photographs could do better; but she lapsed forth to this heart--had lived, or wanted to--more than just wanted, perhaps regretted how she had lived--had somehow deeply suffered: it could be seen in the depths of those reluctant eyes, and from the way the light enclosed and shone from her, and within her, opening realms of possibility: this was her own. Her he desired. His head ached and eyes narrowed with the intensity of his gazing, then as if an obscure fog had blown up in the mind, he experienced fear of her and was aware that he had received an impression, somehow, of evil. He shuddered, saying softly, it is thus with us all. Leo brewed some tea in a small pot and sat sipping it without sugar, to calm himself. But before he had finished drinking, again with excitement he examined the face and found it good: good for Leo Finkle. Only such a one could understand him and help him seek whatever he was seeking. She might, perhaps, love him. How she had happened to be among the discards in Salzman's barrel he could never guess, but he knew he must urgently go find her.

Wonderboy flashed in the sun. It caught the sphere it was biggest. A noise like a twenty-one gun salute cracked the sky. There was a straining, ripping sound and a few drops of rain spattered to the ground somebody then shouted it was raining cats and dogs. By the time of Roy got in from second he was wading in water ankle deep.

But that’s what happened, Freeman, who had often been in love, told himself. Until you were lovers you were strangers.

L'idea che qualunque cosa facesse si dovesse trasformare in un evento irrimediabile, gli dava un senso disperato di frustrazione.

INTERVIEWER: What specific piece of advice would you give to young writers? MALAMUD: Write your heart out.

We have two lives; the one we learn with and the one after that.

I’m an American, I’m a Jew, and I write for all men.

She had recently come to think that in such unhappy times-when the odds were so high against personal happiness-to find love was miraculous, and to fulfill it as best as two people could was what really mattered. Was it more important to insist a man's religious beliefs be exactly hers, or that the two of them have in common ideals, a desire to keep love in their lives, and to preserve in every possible way what was best in themselves? The less difference among people, the better; thus she settled it for herself yet was dissatisfied for those for whom she hadn't settled it,

Leo hurried up to bed and hid under the covers. Under the covers he thought his life through. Although he soon fell asleep he could not sleep her out of his mind. He woke, beating his breast. Though he prayed to be rid of her, his prayers went unanswered. Through days of torment he endlessly struggled not to love her; fearing success, he escaped it. He then concluded to convert her to goodness, himself to God. The idea alternately nauseated and exalted him.

Janna Malamud Smith, who grew up with the Hyman children during the years her father, Bernard Malamud, taught at Bennington College, writes chillingly in her memoir that the teenaged Sarah Hyman once told her—“explaining to me a view she attributed to her father”—that there was no such thing as rape: “However adamant, female protest was simply foreplay. Women wanted to be forced, and ultimately their excitement made them receptive, no matter what their claim.

Le storie ci accompagneranno finchè esisterà l'uomo. Lo si capisce, in parte, dall'effetto che hanno sui bambini. Grazie alle storie i bambini capiscono che il mistero non li ucciderà. Grazie alle storie scoprono di avere un futuro.

Who are you, Yakov, Moses himself? If you don’t hear His voice so let Him hear yours. ‘When prayers go up blessings descend.’” “Scorpions descend, hail, fire, sharp rocks, excrement. For that I don’t need God’s help, the Russians are enough.

[Bernard Malamud] told an interviewer: There's no one way--there's too much drivel about the subject. You're who you are, not Fitzgerald or Thomas Wolfe. You write by sitting down and writing. There's no particular time or place--you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he's disciplined, doesn't matter. If he or she is not disciplined, no sympathetic magic will help. The trick is to make time--not steal it--and produce the fiction. If the stories come, you get them written, you're on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.

Lei si recava in biblioteca in media due volte a settimana, prendendo solo un libro o due per volta, perché ritornare a chiederne un altro era una delle sue poche gioie. Anche nei momenti in cui si sentiva più sola le piaceva trovarsi in mezzo ai libri, sebbene qualche volta fosse deprimente vedere il numero dei volumi che non aveva ancora letto.

Experience makes good people better." She was staring at the lake. "How does it do that?" "Through their suffering." "I had enough of that," he said in disgust. "We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness All it taught me was to stay away from it. I am sick of all I have suffered." She shrank away a little.

Yakov,” said Shmuel, “He invented light. He created the world. He made us both. The true miracle is belief. I believe in Him. Job said, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.’ He said more but that’s enough.” “To win a lousy bet with the devil he killed off all the servants and innocent children of Job. For that alone I hate him, not to mention ten thousand pogroms. Ach, why do you make me talk fairy tales? Job is an invention and so is God.

I do not have to tell you there has been a disappointing retreat of progress in recent times, whatever it is we call progress, especially disappointing because of the little we have had since the Emancipation. There’s something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil. Still, the original decrees have not been withdrawn and are therefore the law.

At thirty-three the Whammer still enjoyed exceptional eyesight. He saw the ball spin off Roy's fingertips and it reminded him of a white pigeon he had kept as a boy, that he would send into flight by flipping it into the air. The ball flew at him and he was conscious of its bird-form and white flapping wings, until it suddenly disappeared from view. He heard a noise like the bang of a firecracker at his feet and Sam had the ball in his mitt. Unable to believe his ears he heard Mercy intone a reluctant strike.

Benché Levin gioisse del bel tempo inatteso, il suo piacere era temperato da una punta di abituale tristezza di fronte all’implacabile ritmo della natura: mutamento decretato da una forza che produceva, lui volente o nolente, la primavera di oggi, il gelo di domani, la vecchiaia, la morte, ma che non era opera dell’uomo; mutamento che non era mutamento, in cicli eternamente uguali, una ripetizione di cui lui faceva parte, e dunque com’era possibile conquistare la libertà dentro e fuori di sé? Era per questo che la sua vita, malgrado lo sforzo risoluto di strapparsi da ciò che aveva già vissuto, restava sempre la stessa? E che, essendo lui fatto in un certo modo e vivendo le esperienze che egli stesso generava, non aveva ottenuto niente di più che brevi momenti di soddisfazione, non tanto lunghi da poter smettere di domandarsi se li aveva avuti davvero? Se solo sapessi vivere ammettendo ciò di cui sono convinto, pensava Levin. Quante volte mi sono detto che la felicità non è una cosa che si riesce a stanare con una spedizione di caccia, un graal nascosto e complicato che tocca a chi lo vede per primo, ma che invece è la grazia che va a posarsi sullo spirito, quando c’è il desiderio della vita. Siamo qui per poco, spesso nelle peggiori circostanze: è probabile che l’uomo, un giorno, venga soffiato via dalla punta delle dita di Qualcuno; una battaglia perduta prima ancora di sapere cosa stavamo facendo, eppure quanto è bello, e nobile, anche solo essere esistiti. Me lo sono ripetuto molte volte in varie circostanze, dunque perché non riesco a smettere di preoccuparmi dell’arrivo o della durata della felicità, posto che arrivi mai, o che duri? La scontentezza non porta né denaro sonante né vero amore, dunque perché non godersi questa tenera, stupenda giornata invece di salutarla con la storia di tutto ciò che non ho avuto?

Quando un uomo è onesto dorme tranquillo. E questo vale più di cinque centesimi rubati.

L'uomo non dimentica mai i luoghi in cui ha corso da bambino.

Ogni occhiata perduta, per uno che viveva di sguardi, era una perdita irrimediabile.

Just to show them that I wasn’t a lot of hot air I’d say names to them – like “Bellow” and “Malamud” and “Albee” – you know, so they’d begin to trust me.

«Anch’io sono consapevole del cattivo uso che ho fatto della mia vita, di come passa in fretta e di come la butto via. Pretendo da me più di quello che ottengo, forse più di quello che ho ottenuto. Siamo due falliti, signor Levin?»

It was a strange thing about people-they could look the same but be different.

Certe persone desidererebbero che i loro figli leggessero di più. Io vorrei che tu leggessi di meno.

Era in balia di ogni soffio di vento, non possedeva nulla.

Sam Pearl, curvo su un foglio verde delle corse, gli fece un cenno di saluto con la mano grassoccia. A nessuno dei due veniva mai in mente di mettersi a chiacchierare. Che ne capiva lui delle corse di cavalli? Che ne sapeva l'altro della tragicità della vita?

Tirò su una palata di neve e la buttò in strada. Si polverizzò a mezz'aria e turbinò via.

Più sgobbava - la sua fatica era un'immagine del tempo che divora se stesso - meno sembrava possedere.

L'America era diventata troppo complicata e un uomo non contava più nulla. Troppi negozi, troppe depressioni, troppe ansie. Cosa aveva voluto fuggire, venendo qui?

Erano i primi di novembre e all'alba l'oscurità della notte durava ancora nella via, ma il vento, con meraviglia del negoziante, imperversava già. Gli sbatté con violenza il grembiule in faccia mentre si chinava a raccogliere le due cassette di latte dal bordo del marciapiede. Ansimando, Morris Bober trascinò fino alla porta i pesanti recipienti.

Ultimately, though, neither refocusing on the Holocaust nor reenergizing Tikkun Olam could dilute the lure of the melting pot. Assimilation, according to surveys, soared, with as many as 70 percent of all non-Orthodox Jews marrying outside the faith. The younger the Jews, statistics showed, the shallower their religious roots. The supreme question asked by post–World War II Jewish writers such as Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth, “How can I reconcile being Jewish and American?” was no longer even intelligible to young American Jews. None would feel the need to begin a book, as Saul Bellow did in The Adventures of Augie March, with “I am an American, Chicago born.” Bred on that literature, I saw no contradiction between love for America and loyalty to my people and its nation-state. But that was not the case of the Jewish twenty-somethings, members of a liberal congregation I visited in Washington, who declined to discuss issues, such as intermarriage and peoplehood, that they considered borderline racist. Israel was virtually taboo. For Israel had also changed. From the spunky, intrepid frontier state that once exhilarated American Jews, Israel was increasingly portrayed by the press as a warlike and intolerant state. That discomfiting image, however skewed, could not camouflage the fact that Israel ruled over more than two million Palestinians and settled what virtually the entire world regarded as their land. The country that was supposed to normalize Jews and instill them with pride was making many American Jews feel more isolated and embarrassed. I shared their discomfort and even their pain. Yet I also wrestled with the inability of those same American Jews to understand Israel’s existential quandary, that creating a Palestinian state that refused to make genuine peace with us and was likely to devolve into a terrorist chaos was at least as dangerous as not creating one. I was frustrated by their lack of anguish in demanding Israel’s withdrawal from land sacred to their forebears for nearly four millennia. “Disagree with the settlers,” I wanted to tell them, “denounce them if you must, but do not disown them, for they—like you—are part of our people.

Era nato buono, il che se ti capita è una virtù.

Quando si ha qualcosa da fare che valga la pena, dormire è una perdita.

لسر با خود فکر کرد، ‌درست می‌نویسم ولی غلط به زبان می‌آورم. درست می‌نویسم چون چندین بار اصلاحش می‌کنم. چیزی که به زبان می‌آورم اصلاح نشده و اغلب اشتباه است. سپس با خود اندیشید، درباره عشق می‌نویسم چون چیز زیادی در موردش نمی‌دانم.

Moralitatea are o mie de surse și nesfârșite mijloace de expresie

Un om îngrijorat este pe jumătate orb

My style flows from the fingers. The eye and ear approve or amend.

Peccato.” The sculptor shrugged and drifted away. A minute later there was another fistfight, during

Fidelman thanked him, in full blush. “Who are you here with?” Orazio Pinello asked. “Annamaria Oliovino.” “Her?” said the sculptor. “But she’s a fake.

being naturally honest, he didn’t believe that others come by their dishonesty naturally.